Seven Children Orphaned

Nikola Maric, a member of the Croatian Defense Council, has been charged with participating in acts of persecution, murder, torture and other inhumane acts from November 1992 to October 1993.

In July 1993, Maric allegedly forced Bosniak men in thev illage of Gornji Lug to surrender to Croat forces by threatening to kill thei rwives and children. The men were then held in detention at a secondary school in Prozor. Maric allegedly expelled the remaining civilians from the village the same month.

He has also been accused of causing the enforced disappearance of six prisoners detained in the Prozor secondary school.

Witness Zulka Purgic, who lived in the village of Lug, said her three sons and her neighbour Salko Purgic were detained in Prozor on July4, 1993.

“My husband was with me until August 9, when Nikola Marica nd his brother Vlado came and expelled us to Duge. His brother came to my house, and I saw him in front of Fatima Osmic’s house,” Purgic said.

She said her husband Omer was separated from her at the station with two other men and was detained in a secondary school in Prozor,where she visited him several times. According to Purgic, she found out from several detainees that her husband, along with five other men, had been taken out of the school by Nikola Maric.

“For the past 22 years, there has been no day or night that I don’t cry, waiting to find his bones,” Purgic said.

She said she saw Nikola Maric the day aftershe was taken to Duge, when she came back to her house with her daughter to get some food. She said Maric threw the food, and then she heard two shots behind her back. A man named Vlado Brizar was also with him.

“I turned around and saw that Nikola had put agun on his belt. We went by the left side of the road, and then my daughter screamed and I saw that he was driving a car towards us very fast. If we had not jumped into a ditch, he would have run us over,” Purgic said.

Purgic said she saw Maric and his brothers on August 28, 1993, when the Bosniak population was expelled from the village of Duge to the municipality of Konjic.

The prosecution asked Purgic whether sheintended to make a property claim.

“Yes, he orphaned my seven children,” Purgicreplied.

Vahida Purgia, the second witness to testify at this hearing, said her husband Selim was detained in the secondary school in Prozor on July 17, 1993.

“He told me Nikola Maric said all the men must gather at the station…My mother-in-law Saha went to the station and asked Nikola Maric why he was taking him, when they already took away her Salko. Shelost consciousness,” Purgia said. She said she visited her husband several times, before he was killed being used as a human shield.

Fatima Osmic also testified at this hearing.She said Maric took her son Enver to the detention camp in Prozor. She said he was taken away to be used as a human shield on July 31, 1993, and was killed.

She said she was expelled to Duge, and then further away, while her husband was separated and taken to the secondary school in Prozor, and then to detention camps in Herzegovina.

All three witnesses said they knew Maric and his family very well.

The trial will continue on May 14.